Scientists discover how the brain adds new information to old memories

Imagine, for example, a building site in your neighbourhood. The human brain can remember three key stages of it: the original state before the renovation, the construction work itself, and the final outcome once the project is completed. But how does it manage not to muddle those three memories?The Institute of Neurosciences, a public research centre made up of CSIC and Miguel Hernández University, believes it has found this neurological mechanism in its new study published in the journal 'PLOS Biology' (source in Spanish).The team at its Neuronal Network Plasticity laboratory thinks the brain uses a region of the hippocampus known as the dentate gyrus, which is dedicated to forming new memories. There, a specific type of neuron inhibits the activity of other cells to help integrate new experiences.To test this idea, the researchers studied this inhibition process in mice, increasing or reducing it.